#Cape Crawford

[flagbridge]

Shabbat Shalom! A bunch of Phantom Broadway (and one UST) Gifs I made but never posted.

1&2: Ben Crawford, Broadway (w/ Emilie Kouatchou)

3: Jeremy Stolle, Broadway (w/ Elizabeth Welch)

4. Gary Mauer, US Tour (w/ Elizabeth Southard)

5. Laird Mackintosh, Broadway

POTOMER DAY 24: GIFSET-Random US Phantoms

From April 23 -June 11, I am posting 49 days of POTO content to mark the Omer, except on Shabbat. Masterlist of prior posts.

[classyinfur]

[opera-ghost]

michael crawford and sarah brightman in masquerade/why so silent (broadway, 1988) + bonus with steve barton(!):

[anewbrainjughead]

when i was 11 this was my phantom of the paradise. alw's magnum opus kinda.

[womenofwrestlingfashion]

Bianca wears the Bouclé-Jacquard Cape from Gucci ($3,200)

[flagbridge]

What happened between Anthony Crivello and that cape is…between him and G-d I guess.

Do you have a compilation of the best cape swishes?

I've gotten this request enough times that I finally decided to stop being lazy and make one!

Scott Davies, London

Jeremy Stolle, Broadway

Greg Mills, Broadway

Laird Mackintosh, Broadway

John Cudia, U.S. Tour

Davis Gaines, Los Angeles

Anthony Crivello, Las Vegas

Earl Carpenter, London

(I did look at a bunch of international productions, but they're apparently just not as showy.)

[forever-and-whats-left]

To the request of @lepetitghostcat , I drew all the ideas I had rattling around in my head.

I made the mistake of calling red death erik Don Juan erik, so sorry to all those who were excited. (It was the one that won too😭)

Also my first time drawing musical Erik in a hot minute! What do you think? I like sticking as close to canon as possible. I really enjoy his hat and cape, but most of all I love Michael Crawford 😍😍😍

Also the first time in a while since I’ve drawn with this pen. Forgot how much I missed it

[bitter69uk]

“This classic camp bitchfest is a prime example of Joan Crawford doing the sort of thing she always did best. Though disguised as a soaper, it’s actually almost a horror movie, and she’s the monster. The plot structure is pure Gothic romance: a sweet young innocent (Lucy Marlow) comes to stay at a gracious Southern mansion that’s populated with a clan of snarling neurotics. Presiding over this menage is Crawford, who seems to be a perfectly charming, devoted wife and mother. In fact, however, she’s a sweetly malevolent, slyly manipulative gorgon of absolute selfishness and downright vicious vindictiveness. Her face is made up like a Kabuki mask; she looks like a dragon lady in a comic book. As for her gowns (by Jean Louis), they’re all bedecked with trains and veils and capes, as if she were a vampire …”

/ Paul Roen writing about Queen Bee (1955) in High Camp: A Gay Guide to Camp and Cult Films Volume Two by (1997) /

Yes! Get stung by the Queen Bee herself when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club (devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People) presents this irresistible melodrama on 20 February at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Starring fierce-eyed diva Joan Crawford (pictured) at her most imperious! Numbers are limited, so reserve your seat via Fontaine’s website. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. Full sordid details HERE.

[herprivateswe]

Outdoor portrait of 285 Sergeant (Sgt) Henry Thomas Ladson Couve, 8th Battalion from Dandenong, Victoria holding his rifle while skinning fruit in the desert. A 24 year civil servant prior to enlisting on 21 August 1914, he was promoted to Sergeant the next day and embarked for overseas with C Company from Melbourne on 19 October 1914 aboard HMAT Benalla (A24). After a stopover in Albany, Western Australia, they arrived in Egypt on 2 December 1914. Following further training in Egypt, the battalion took part in the Gallipoli landings on 25 April as part of the second wave. Following promotion to Second Lieutenant on 28 April 1915, he was killed in action on 8 May 1915 and is commemorated on the Helles Memorial, Cape Helles, Gallipoli, Turkey with others who have no known grave. This image is from the collection of brothers Lt Alan Crawford Couve and 2nd Lt Henry Thomas Ladson Couve from Dandenong, Victoria. They photographed members of their unit in Egypt prior to serving at Gallipoli where they both died.

[meilas]

buff, fluff, or kenough

Buff: a Phantom who either is buff, or has buff energy

JRox - just look at him

Peter Karrie - more vibes than appearance, but if you have someone willing to stand up fully on the angel statue, that guy is going to be buff

Brent Barrett - buffest hug ever

Brad Little

Peter Joback - just watch the way he cuts the noose!

John Cudia - just look at the snap on that cape!

Anthony Crivello - buffest cape swish

Gerard Butler

Paul Schaefer

Derrick Davis

Fluff:

Killian Donnelly

Saulo Vasconcelos

Stephen Tewksbury

David Shannon

Greg Mills - pure fluff, look for yourself

Thomas Schulze

Franc D’Ambrosio - pure. fluff. this is what every fanfic writer has in their heads when they tag their fics.

John Owen-Jones

Norm Lewis

Josh Piterman - I initially had him in the Kenough category, but I have seen the error of my ways. This man is fluff. Look at that hair.

Kenough:

Jeremy Stolle - this gif illustrates exactly why Stolle is Kenough

Gary Mauer

Davis Gaines - the way he looks at her? oh yes.

Thomas James O’Leary

Michael Crawford

Hugh Panaro - if you don't think this man is Kenough, you need to get your head checked.

Earl Carpenter - this man knows he is Kenough

Scruff(y):

Cooper Grodin

Chris Mann

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

I haven't done lists in a while and there's a lot pilling up just this week so it's time to bring it back.

1. I'm revisting Old Hollywood again now that I've watched most of the films nominated for Oscar this year. The Be Kind Rewind youtube channel has been sort of the trigger for going back to the past and for that I have to thank @shimako for the recommendation 🩷 I've watched the 2 hour and a half video essays on the Valley of The Dolls and the behind the scenes story is far more interesting that the film itself.

Not to say that the themes addressed in the film wouldn't be, like disillusionment in Hollywood, personal grievances, what it means to be an actress and especially not a really succesful one. It reminded me of Didion's Play It As It Lays (which I think it's a better piece of literature although the film adaption seems to have turned into a failure?)

2. Anyway, that made me go down the rabbit hole and watch other essays on Ruth Gordon (amazing woman) and Katharine Hepburn.

3 . Speaking of Hepburn, I realized yesterday that I've only seen her paired on screen with Cary Grant and not with Spencer Tracy (I know!). So I rectified that mistake and I watched Adam's Rib (George Cukor, 1949) and I finally understood what all the fuss was about and I have some sort of theory. Grant and Hepburn together are like this very performative version of a couple in which the constant bickering takes center stage, but even when they do get together, it lacks something. A bit of authenticity. But with the Hepburn-Tracy duo, you can almost feel it. It's right there in the small, natural gestures. Instant chemistry and love. They work so well together. I guess the off screen affair of 26 years helped that as well.

3. I love Mommy Dearest and Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford. The screaming, the crying, the makeup, "No wire hangers!". Poor baby Christina. It's a shame though that Faye Dunaway distanced herself from it because of how "bad" it turned out, but I understand why she felt she had to do it.

But I also couldn't help but think of DeNiro in Cape Fear and his own campy performance in a very 90s ridiculous film that allowed Scorsese to try his hand at that type of thriller. DeNiro's career didn't suffer because of it, as opposed to Dunaway's version of camp, which I prefer actually. It may have been hated at that time, but Mommie Dearest is a cult classic.

*Bonus: Currently listening to another You Must Remember This podcast series. It's Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, aka the famous old Hollywood gossip columnists.

Now, for some ridiculous internet & showbiz drama:

4. People going conspiracy mode over Kate Middleton? Some of us lived months without any sign from Jimin. They could learn from that. But love the memes.

5. I feel sorry for those kids in Glasgow. They really experienced the effects of AI used by assholes who wanted to make some money. The lady in green hair has been all over twitter and whilst funny for us, it is shitty to be in her shoes. The Unknown! 🤦‍♀️

6. Who was an ass to Rebecca Ferguson on set? The consensus is that Jake Gyllenhaal was the culprit and I wouldn't be surprised. But it needs more investigating.

7. Over in K-Pop Land Karina gets a boyfriend, her fans are devasted and Koreaboo is pumping "articles" by the minute. What else is new?

8. Stans of all types are stanning and fighting. One day 🐥 girlies, the next day 🐰 girlies and all the other crazies all week long, no break. I do read the stuff in my inbox, but I'm really not in a mood to comment on every shitty thing that happens so often. I know that once I do it, then I just invite more and it's just pointless. There's no actual JM and JK which is frustrating enough and no travel show on the horizon and it's just too bleak at this point.

We're waiting, clock is ticking. At least release a travel show as a summer content, ok?

9. I did see that Billboard kpop 100 top. Yeah, I don't understand the logic of including individual artists if they haven't charted on their own. Don't these people have editors to point out the flaws in the listicles? It's just dumb.

[classyinfur]

[cdaae]

Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the part of Christine Daaé for his wife, Sarah Brightman, and for her impressive vocal ability, something the Lloyd Webbers refer to as The Voice. This raises a question, as anyone who saw Brightman in The Phantom of the Opera can attest: The Voice sounds great, but what about . . . The Acting?

That's why, last season, the best Phantom tickets were the ones for Thursday nights and Saturday matinees -the two performances each week when La Brightman rested. On those days Patti Cohenour, a petite thirty-five-year-old American actress with a full-bodied and lyrical soprano, reinvented Christine with a pathos that deepened the entire enterprise.

Now Cohenour has taken over the role, and it may help her make the leap from Broadway ingenue/critic's darling to star. Her graceful neck, porcelain skin and delicate nose and mouth give her face the sad seriousness of another era-perhaps that's why she's almost always cast as a vulnerable nineteenth-century heroine (most notably Rosa Bud in The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Mimi in Joseph Papp's 1984 La Bohème).

As Christine, Cohenour's scenes with the Phantom are so sexually charged that she ignites Michael Crawford's already passionate performance. "If you've ever been in a relationship that's out of control, that's obviously going to be very destructive, then you know what this relationship is," observes Cohenour. "Ultimately Christine chooses to live a long life rather than be with this vicious, brilliant, thrilling creature."

Even the mausoleum song ("Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again"), once the longest number on God's earth, is now a well-acted playlet in which Christine finds the resolve to take hold of her fate. The scene, says Cohenour, is particularly resonant because she lost her own father in 1983 and because when she was rehearsing it she was catapulted back to her childhood in Albuquerque, New Mexico. "When I was five years old, I used to take this cat I had and stand in the brick barbecue pit and sing to it. I imagined blue lights all around me," she recalls. "When I was rehearsing the mausoleum scene, I was standing onstage in a blue cape, surrounded by blue light.

I remembered that image, and I was completely struck dumb, because it seemed that as a child I had seen ahead to this moment." It may be that Cohenour's link to Christine-the chorus girl turned opera star--goes deeper than even she dreams.

[jules-has-notes]

Phantom of the Opera — VoicePlay music video

The theater kids of a cappella had such a grand time with their entertaining "Aca Top 10 — Broadway" countdown that they included it in their setlist for the 2015 Sing-Off tour. But even among the silliness, Tony's excerpt of Phantom revealed some serious dramatic chops. VoicePlay rarely record a song in a way it's already been done by a thousand others, though. Layne created a bold take on this classic, haunting ballad.

They'd dipped their toes into the pool of full character costumes with "Survivor" and "Once Upon a Dream", so this was the next step in their journey toward more elaborate productions. And if you're going to tackle one of the most iconic songs in musical theater, you call in your friend who's performed in multiple Broadway shows.

Details:

title: Phantom of the Opera (feat. Rachel Potter)

original performers: Sarah Brightman as Christine Daaé & Michael Crawford as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera (1986)

written by: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart, Richard Stilgoe, & Mike Batt

arranged by: Layne Stein

release date: 18 November 2015

My favorite bits:

the haunting reverb on the opening section

Rachel's crisp, precise vocalizations

Earl and Eli's staccato harmonies, echoing the lyrics

Layne and Geoff kicking in the dubstep beat

Tony's dramatic entrance and swirling cape toss

the dreamy pink lighting change during the softer verse

the other four guys circling and surrounding Rachel as Tony demands that she "Sing!"

that lingering echo of her final high note

the whole aesthetic — "Intensely bored dilletantes" is a surprisingly good look for them.

the delightfully jarring cut from intense Phantom Tony to casual outro Tony

Trivia:

The guys had previously recorded a portion of this song as part of their "Aca Top 10 — Broadway" medley, which they also performed on the 2015 Sing-Off Tour.

Fans were already hyped for the full version, but VoicePlay built anticipation even more by posting countdown images to their social media.

Talented seamster that he is, Tony made Rachel's incredible flouncy Christine gown.

Tony's skilled cape-ography during his entrance was honed over a decade of playing Dracula in the Beetlejuice Rock and Roll Graveyard Revue at Universal Studios. (Often alongside Geoff, Kathy, and other future VoicePlay and PattyCake collaborators.)

The video description on YouTube includes a note that the set was built by Layne, Tony, and "Geoff's mutilated hand". He slipped and jabbed a screwdriver into his palm during construction. If you watch closely, he's very deliberate about his hand placements to hide and accommodate the wound.

They got a mention on Playbill's website.

The upload on Facebook hit 3 million views in just a month, and 10 million views in less than six months.

This video was nominated for a 2016 CARA in the Best Non-Scholastic Video category.

It was also nominated for the 2017 A Cappella Video Awards in both the Outstanding Costume / Makeup and Best Musical / Soundtrack Video categories, and won the latter.

A high school a cappella group in California performed this arrangement on a float during their homecoming parade the following autumn.

Professional swing dancers Jesse Lopez and Patty Vo used this song for their "superstar show" at the 2017 DC Swing Experience.

Tony busted out his mask and cape again three years later to lurk in the shadows when PattyCake produced "The Phantom Showman" mashup music video for classical singer Fernando Varela.

[kitchen-light]

One of the problems of this biography is length. This second volume, Eliot After ‘The Waste Land’, is 609 pages long and covers the years from 1922 to Eliot’s death in January 1965. Quite long enough, you might think, after reading it. A typical volume of Eliot’s letters covers three years and takes just over a thousand pages, with impeccably informative and unstinting annotation by John Haffenden. That 8,357 page project has reached Volume 9, to the end of 1941. Robert Crawford has an impossible task, made more difficult by his determination to cram in everything, or nearly everything. Do we need the detail that Eliot’s secretary, Miss Bradby [Anne Ridler] observed that ‘when afternoon tea was served he did not take the sugar; Miss Bradby noticed how he “would carefully remove the teaspoon from his saucer before it became slopped with tea”’. Now you know.

Craig Raine, We Should All Calm Down, Review of “Robert Crawford, Eliot After ‘The Waste Land’ (Jonathan Cape) £25″, published in PN Review 268, Volume 49 Number 2, November - December 2022.

[historicalreusedcostumes]

This blue/pink Cape is worn in 1983 by Jackie Smith-Wood as Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park and many years later seen by an Lady in Lost in Austen (2008)